What to say? Simply said, it was the night of never-ending endings. Every song was given the Trey treatment and, no, the bottom never fell out, each and every song was given the Trey treatment and it was a treat for those that either were there live as I was or through the tube, regardless it was off the hook and overboard.

Walked in looking for my Ocelot, got it big time. Rock and Roll to end the 1st set was huge. The 46 Days in the 2nd set, ditto. The entire 3rd set, WOW! Phish on Broadway, indeed! One of the greatest songs of all time, Nights on Broadway by the Bee Gees, played as the intro music into said 3rd set told us everything we needed to know 'bout the homage that was to be paid to the World's Most Famous Arena on the night of the World's Most Famous Holiday and they didn't let us forget where we were or what we were doing there. Damm, how do they rise to the occasion? Don't know but real thankful to witness it. PHISH wins. Again.

Peace,
Alex

Ghost. Get it Now- just do it.

This show typifies 2010. 7 1/2 min- 13 min jams- cask strength, poured straight up. What a great show to cap off a fantastic year!

If somehow you're still not aware, go listen to this Ghost now. After you're done, we'll talk about whatever the heck else there is to talk about.

yeah. I had to 5 star it.

The 2nd set was one of the most musically impressive NYE sets for these ears. The Sand gets the party into gear, hard to no give this one another listen, and the Down with Disease leaves us wondering what will indeed bring in the New Year since it's now off the table...

Then they drop Ghost and that morphs into the Song of the Run, if not the year. With fans still melted from the Ghost, the band tops it off with the Manteca sandwiched YEM. the Crab in my shoemouth they've teased, and fans chased throughout the year. 2nd set A+

The Meatstick NYE gag went off without a hitch. The band disappearing from stage/hot dog returns/"Broadway" Phish Meastick! All a grand spectacle inside MSG.

Glad to see the band is firing on all cylinders musically and creatively at the same time again! Happy 2011

CRAB IN MY SHOEMOUTH! This show was a straight up barn burner! From the first few chucks of Punch, to the wall shattering Ghost, to the YEMteca, to the Meatstick extravaganza, to the last notes of the feedback solo in First Tube, this night was a true gem. The boys were in peak form, crafting tight grooves all night and communicating with one other on a higher plane. The energy in the garden was absolutely surging, and the band proceeded to gobble it up and spit it right back out like a hungry, relentless, four headed beast!

What a great show.... from start to finish. I kept waiting for the bottom to drop out and it never happened. Some of the best jamming I have ever heard. Killer.

Great show from start to finish. Set I was completely random, & I never had any sort of handle on what direction they were going. Weigh was freakin' stupendous. Burn that Bridge was a nice new blues-rock song, & I really liked Gone as well. Everything was played perfectly. Ocelot was extremely impressive.

Set II was funny. In a 3-set show, I never know if the second set would have more of a 1st- or 2nd-set feel. Wilson through NICU was like a 1st set (Sand wasn't too long or crazy), then Down with Disease on was 2nd-set fashion, with each jam being completely awesome. Disease-->Ghost blew me away, and YEM Manteca was phenomenal.

Set III was a good time. After Midnight was a lot of fun & Slave was stellar. Could've been longer or crazier, but a damn fine set.

Rock and Roll is pure '95 machine gun Trey revived. If you don't think the lick at 5:27 just smokes, then I feel sorry for you. Such a great set closer that was a massive dose of adrenaline and set the tone for an amazing set 2. Of all the shows I've seen I can't remember a singe set break that went by quicker. Obviously the Ghost and all of Set 2 smoke as well.

My first and only New Year's show. . . . . .

I'd gone alone but brought Ocedoc guitar shirts to give away to everyone. The people around me were really cool the whole night too. I was offered far more of several kinds of alcohol and other substances than I could possibly consume in one evening. I must say I'd never been to a New Year's party quite like this one. When the balloons dropped, I threw out my last t-shirt to some random person in the crowd. Wonder who got it? Phish had already by that point played their Golden Ghost, which had to have been the culmination of all the Ghosts they'd played that year.

It was so wild. Not their their most precise performance, but they brought the party to the stage and into the crowd. . . literally. Riding the hot dog again. The crazy Meatstick.

I really liked hearing 46 Days live for the first time, as well as hearing Burn That Bridge for the first time. Nice job. Hope I get to another one.

the golden gHOSEt

spectacular show. Loved the meatstick, but waste is my wife's and I "should have used it" song for our wedding. What a great time, thanks Phish for another great night in the memory banks.

What a fun Meatstick!!

On December 31st, 2010 I attended my first-ever Phish-hosted New Year’s Eve concert, which took place at Madison Square Garden in New York City. M’lady and I had driven straight from my family’s Christmas celebrations in Moncton, New Brunswick to Worcester, Massachusetts (a town name/condiment that I just can not pronounce properly. It’s frustrating but at least people tend to get a kick out of hearing me try) for a night of Phish, then it was on to the Big Apple for a birthday show (of mine) featuring Prince, followed by another night of Phish, this concert, and still another Phish concert on the first of January.

Oh, and then we went to a Broadway musical on January 2nd, after which we did our best to get out of town and almost succeeded.

But getting back to this night in particular, m’lady and I emerged from the subway into a normally bustling city that was bursting with energy in all directions. A few blocks away the scattered remains of Dick Clark was soon to be hosting one of the most famous New Years celebrations in the world, coaxing the ball in Times Square down with a zillion eyes watching. Man, the shows you could go to on this night alone! Chuck Berry was playing over at BB King’s, Gov’t Mule was at the famous Beacon Theatre, the Drive-By Truckers were in town…not to mention Phish of course; there was simply tons going on everywhere you cared to look. NYC kicks it pretty hard as a regular feature but for NYE things tend to get cranked up a few notches.

We had inadvertently been shut out of tickets for the all-important December 31st Phish show, TicketMaster having erroneously issuing me wheelchair access tickets and then taking them away when I told them I was in fact able-bodied. I assured them that I would likely find myself libated enough to require much assistance, but they wouldn’t budge no matter how many times I badgered their unbadgerable customer service, which left us scrambling for a pair of very hard-to-get tickets.

And then lo, the evening before kindness had reared its karmic head. Friends we had stayed with at previous shows voluntarily traded their pair of 100 level tickets (and $160 cash) for two pairs of 400 level tickets in order to help us out. There were many hugs.

It’s notable to note that Phish invariably pulls out all the stops on New Year’s Eve, always playing three sets instead of their standard two-set show and, most notoriously, they always always always come up with some sort of midnight gag to present to the crowd. These gags are usually elaborate (but not always), usually musical (but not always), and always (yes, always) a surprise.

(Phish are remarkably good secret-keepers. Between their NYE stunts and their Hallowe’en ‘musical costumes’ these things never, ever leak to the phans, no matter how ‘inside’ your information; and our information can get pretty inside.)

On this night Phish timed the new years countdown to fall within their novelty song Meatstick. I call Meatstick a novelty song not merely because the lyrics are silly (lots of Phish songs have silly lyrics), but because it is intrinsically linked to a silly dance called The Meatstick, which was created in an effort to achieve the world record for most people doing a dance way back at one of their festivals. The attempt failed as the Guinness officials deemed that The Meatstick didn’t actually qualify as a dance.

But not only that, during an Asian tour the Phish fellas had learned how to sing the chorus of the song in Japanese, and they had been doing so for one of the choruses ever since.

So I say “novelty”.

Anyway, that latter point played directly into the gag at this show, which opened the third set. As the Phish boys finished up their Japanese version of the song’s chorus they were joined onstage by a quartet of tribal African dancers, who sang the chorus in their native tongue. Then out came a Mariachi band, singing and playing the chorus in Spanish. Then a group of Hasidic Jews, then a quartet of Swedish girls dressed in ski gear.

I’m sure you get the idea.

Canadian Mounties, Hawaiians in grass skirts, Swiss yodellers, Germans in lederhosen, belly dancers, whirling Dervishes…ultimately there were about fifty people on the stage, all leading the giddy crowd of 20,000 through Phish’s silly Meatstick non-dance. Elaborate? Not really. Musical? Sure. Fun? Absolutely!

And then they followed up with the countdown to midnight accompanied by Auld Lang Syne (of course) right into After Midnight by J. J. Cale (how cool is that?).

And so it was that I discovered that Phish New Year’s Eve concerts are pretty darn fun. No wonder I went again a few years later (and again the year after that).

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